UCLA Football at Crossroads Heading into 2015 Season

After ending the regular season with a 31-10 loss to five-loss Stanford, UCLA football is going to look back on the 2014 season and wonder, "What if...?"

But the Bruins don't have too much time for reflection. With the Pac-12 landscape changing, the program is at a critical crossroads under head coach Jim Mora.

Mora became the first coach in UCLA history to lead nine-plus-win teams in three consecutive seasons. In his fourth year, 2015, Mora will be working with an experienced bunch due to playing a host of underclassmen in the last two years.

"We're an extremely young football team," Mora said. "For senior day, there were six scholarship seniors out there. We are very young, so we're still developing."

Still, the 2014 campaign seems like a missed chance that is hardly guaranteed to come around again.

UCLA beat three of the top contenders in the increasingly crowded South division: Arizona State, USC and champion Arizona.

Moreover, the Bruins won each of those games by 10-plus points.

Winning those pivotal contests, and doing so convincingly, underlines just how monumental an opportunity UCLA let escape.

Linebacker Myles Jack may have said it best: "We figured this year was the year, but I guess not."

So if not 2014 for UCLA, when?

The Pac-12 North's dominance began in the conference's last year at 10 members, with Oregon and Stanford battling for conference supremacy for the first time in a four-year rivalry.

Oregon remains the conference's standard-bearer, heading into Friday's Pac-12 Championship Game ranked No. 2 with a clear path to the inaugural College Football Playoff.

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But the rest of the division backslid in 2014, including a five-loss Stanford team that imposed its will on UCLA to keep the Bruins out of the Pac-12 title tilt.

This was UCLA's year to move ahead of its North division counterparts, but it finished .500 in inter-divisional contests.

Meanwhile, the South is rising faster than the mercury at a UCLA training camp in San Bernardino, California.

A veteran Arizona State won the division in 2013, and despite losing 10 starters on the defensive end this season, it came a touchdown away from repeating.

So long as Todd Graham is the head coach in Tempe, Arizona, the Sun Devils promise to be in the mix with their blend of aggressive, blitzing defense and uptempo offense.

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Rich Rodriguez has Arizona rolling ahead of schedule right into a title-game berth with a youthful roster. The Wildcats start a redshirt freshman at quarterback (Anu Solomon), a true freshman at running back (Nick Wilson), a bevy of underclassmen in the receiving corps and Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year Scooby Wright is a true sophomore.

And then there's crosstown rival USC.

USC has its first full allotment of scholarships available in three years, which allows head coach Steve Sarkisian to add an impressive crop of freshmen to the talented and young existing corps.

UCLA can match the youth on its South counterparts' rosters and then some.

"Coach Mora has no problem playing freshmen. I played as a true freshman," Jack said. "We played more true freshmen than anyone in the country last year."

Eighteen, to be exact—and Jack is correct, that led the nation.

Those true freshmen playing in 2013 were sophomores in 2014 and will be hardened veterans in 2015. That includes such noteworthy Bruins as Thomas Duarte, Alex Redmond, Eddie Vanderdoes, Tahaan Goodman and Jack.

Add juniors and redshirt sophomores likely to be back, including Jordan Payton, Devin Fuller and Paul Perkins, and there's certainly reason for optimism about UCLA's immediate future.

But the players leaving were of paramount importance to the program's transformation under Mora. Linebacker Eric Kendricks set the program mark for tackles in a career, keying the Bruins' run defense and serving as the team leader on that side of the ball.

Brett Hundley has one year of eligibility remaining, but CBSSports.com projects the quarterback as a second-round pick in May's NFL draft.

UCLA already scored a coup in his return for the 2014 season, but a repeat seems unlikely.

Hundley is the only starter Mora has known through his tenure at UCLA.

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Their era together began with Hundley running 74 yards for a touchdown against Rice in his first snap at the collegiate level.

Anything else from his replacement will have the new signal-caller playing catch-up very early into his career.

Hundley's likely successors are either Asiantii Woulard, the redshirt freshman understudy to Hundley these last two seasons, or 5-star recruit Josh Rosen.

It doesn't necessarily matter which candidate takes the reins, so long as one does. UCLA cannot afford to embark on a new era with indecision at quarterback.

Prior to Hundley taking over in 2012, UCLA had a revolving door behind center for the better part of a half-decade, starting from Drew Olson's departure after the 2005 campaign.

Player	Seasons	Passing Yards	TD/INT
McLeod Bethel-Thompson	2007	293	1/5
Richard Brehaut	2009-2012	2,473	12/9
Patrick Cowan	2006-2007	2,478	15/11
Kevin Craft	2008-2009	3,800	13/29
Ben Olson	2005-2007	1,873	12/11
Kevin Prince	2009-2012	4,277	24/22
Osaar Rashaan	2007	259	0/2

It's no coincidence that the 2005 season was UCLA's last to end with at least nine wins until Hundley took over. Reliving the offensively stagnant years in between is a pitfall Mora and Co. must avoid.

The UCLA staff must also remain aggressive on the recruiting trail. USC is taking advantage of its newfound freedom from sanctions, currently setting the pace in the Pac-12 with a 2015 recruiting class ranked No. 9 nationally.

Mora stressed the importance of continuing to build through the recruiting, contrasting UCLA with a Stanford program that rose from cellar-dweller in 2006 to league champion in 2012 and 2013.

"They've been doing what they've been doing longer than we've been doing what we've been doing," Mora said. "They've been recruiting the types of athletes that fit their profile longer than we've been recruiting the types of athletes that fit our profile.

"And these aren't excuses. These are just facts," he added. "So we've got to continue to do what we're doing, because we're making headway."

The headway UCLA makes in the weeks and months to come will determine the program's overall direction for the seasons to come.

Quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise cited. Statistics courtesy of cfbstats.com. Recruiting rankings and information courtesy of 247Sports.com.